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Wednesday, February 29, 2012

One of the things my kids and I share a deep love for is MUFFINS! I have fond memories of my childhood going to the mall with my mom, smelling the wonderful smell of fresh baked muffins and sniffing my way to a MMMuffins! I chain in Canada where I always found my favorite treat...a big chocolate chip muffin! I mean, just check out this muffin...wouldn't YOU want to dig in? You have no idea how good these muffins are....unless of course you've had them...

Then in my young adult years (up until I gave up gluten and got my joints back...I'm still 27...till my b-day in a week and a half...that's still young adult right??) I would indulge in the chocolate chip muffins from Dunkin' Donuts when we made trips to the East Coast and then more frequently when we moved to Dallas. Now....If I want to buy a good muffin, I'll pick up a 4 pack of Udi's blueberry muffins...but I'm not really allowed to eat them, my 4 year old will disown me unless I sneak it, she's pretty possessive of her muffins....wonder where she gets that from!!!

So when it comes to having muffins enough to share, yummy enough to still want to hoard all 12 of them to yourself anyways, muffins that don't contain gluten or dairy and also don't break the bank we make our own. We have a few good recipes we've shared previously such as

*I use Silvana Nardone's Gluten Free Flour Blend if you have another gluten free flour blend you like, just use that but if there is not xanthan gum already in your blend, add 1 tsp xanthan gum to recipe. I just love the texture of Silvana's blend, just like regular flour, light and smooth.

Monday, February 27, 2012

I got my Candace Creations Facebook page launched this weekend and said I would do a giveaway when it received 25 likes... when I woke up this morning I was at 26! yay! I have be meaning to get that started for a long time but just haven't had time.

Anyways, to celebrate the occasion (OK I know 25 is not a ton but giveaways are fun and I haven't done one in a while!) I'm going to be giving away one of my Chubby Cheeks Collection Headbands! Here is a sneak peak at some of the items that are about to be posted in my Etsy shop! (YES I AM FINALLY OPENING IT! haha haven't had time to do that either and I know I originally planned to open in in the fall last year!)

Here are some of the girls' headbands I made that fit size infant-child (some are extra stretchy and can fit up to adult size)

Now I'm going to be giving away the following headband to one lucky winner!

This one fits size infant-adult (a lil' tight though so if you have a bigger head probably won't fit)

Saturday, February 25, 2012

Happy Scrappy Saturday everyone! I can't wait to see what you have in store for this week's linky! This week I have been missing Dallas as I remember this being the time of year flowers start popping up...Here we keep going back and forth to piles of snow that all melt completely, seeming like winter is finished only to get more. At least it's still sunny here for the most part....After living in Seattle area and getting used to weeks of grey I feel in LOVE with the sun when we moved to Dallas and I don't think I can go without it very long after getting used to always having it. ANYWAYS...enough rambling...here are some of the fun projects from last week

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Hi everyone, in case you missed my guest post over at Wanna Be Balaced recently, this is my most recent tutorial. I am excited to share this fun and easy craft project I designed that will help your kids eat more fruits and veggies and can't wait to hear what you think! :)

Sometimes it’s hard to get our kids eating healthy, including a variety of fruits and veggies every day, but it is very important to get all 5 food color groups in there (7 colors total as yellow/orange and blue/ purple are put into the same groups).

To encourage my daughter, I get her pumped up about eating a particular fruit or veggie to help make a rainbow in her tummy. And you know all rainbows are magic right? Well, when you eat lots of different colors of fruits and veggies, it makes a magic rainbow in your tummy that helps your hair grow long, makes you brain really smart, makes your eyes see super good and it makes your body really strong and fast! One of our favorite ways to make an instant rainbow in our tummys together is to make strawberry lemonade with our juicer. It's one of her favorite things to make, the kids love putting the fruits and veggies in and seeing the juice come out! And both my kids chug it, I can barely get any!

Strawberry Lemonade

1 large carrot or 2 small carrots

between half to one cup blueberries

1 1/2 cup strawberries

1 banana

1/3 cucumber

1 lemon

Now to help the kids visualize and keep track of the rainbow in their tummy each day, I made a fun little character that can be customized to resemble your child. Here is what you'll need to make the rainbow in my tummy activity chart.

templates (right click and save images and then print so each one is a full page)

large sheet of drawing paper, butcher paper

pencil, pen

pencil crayons

glue

scissors

scrapbook/colored paper (optional)

7 small round magnets (got mine at hobby lobby)

felt (red, yellow, orange, white, green, blue, purple)

glue gun

Click on image to open the template images in new window, right click and save to your computer. Print each image full size on a sheet of paper.

Pick a hairstyle for your boy or girl or make your own

Trim the top and bottoms of the template pages and line up the legs to the torso and secure with a piece of tape.

Place image under a larger piece of drawing paper or butcher paper and trace the whole image.

Cut out selected hairstyle and either color in with pencil crayons or markers, or do what I did and trace onto a sheet of cardstock that matches your child's hair color and then cut out.

Use the template to give your child's character either a skirt or shorts and again, either color it in, or trace it onto scrapbook/colored paper and then cut out.

Glue the hair and skirt/shorts onto the character. I also cut out some shoes.

If you want, you can color in the eyes and the T-shirt....or your child can color them.

Cut out circles of felt about the size of a quarter, 2 of each color. (I traced the bottom of my jumbo glue stick). With your glue gun, apply some hot glue to the flat surface of your magnet and then press it down in the center of one of the felt circles. Then put hot glue all the way around the edges of the circle. Place the matching felt circle on top and then pinch the seams together.

You can see below how I cut out the character from the big sheet of paper and hung on the fridge. Your child can now move the magnets around and start with an empty tummy each day, adding magnets as they eat various colors! And like I said earlier, there are 7 colors but 5 groups so this is what to aim for

GREEN, RED, WHITE, YELLOW/ORANGE, BLUE/PURPLE...they don't have to actually eat something blue and purple everyday, since they are in the same color group.

To help your child (and yourself) get familiar with a variety of foods from each food color group, visit these fun links and activity pages at Rainbow Foods Activities and Coloring Pages (scroll down till you see the thumbnails of the free printables)

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Happy Saturday everyone and sorry for the delay in getting this up! I try to have it start at midnight Friday night but my big 'lil bro is in town visiting and so I've been pretty preoccupied hanging out with him and showing him around and it's been fun. My 4.5 year old was trying to get him to come watch Tangled with her and he was on Facebook writing a message to a cute girl and she was like "What is uncle Joey doing on the computer!" quite imatiently and I said "He's writing a message to a girl...(then teased) he doesn't have a girlfriend right now so he's trying to get one" and Jordan looks at me with one of those are you kidding me looks and says "Yes he DOES have a girlfriend!" and I said "Who?" and she puts her hand on her chest, leans her head forward at me quite obviously and in a "DUH!" type of response says "ME!!!!" then she jumped up from the couch and went to the computer and kept repeating "Uncle Joey I'm your girlfriend right?" until he responded "yep" lol.

ANYWAYS, back to the link up, here are some of the highlights from last week,,,ya'll amaze me!